Tar Sands Oil Arkansas

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

07 April 13

National security demands secrecy in the heart of Arkansas

ithin a week of the ExxonMobil tar sands oil pipeline burst in Mayflower, Arkansas, ExxonMobil was in charge of the clean-up, the U.S. government had established a no-fly zone over the area, some 40 residents were starting their second week of evacuation, ExxonMobil was threatening to arrest reporters trying to cover the spill, and several homeowners had filed a class action lawsuit seeking damages from the world's second-most-profitable corporation, which had helped keep the pipeline secret from terrorists.

Before March 29, even some people living next to ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline didn't know it was there. All that changed abruptly around 2:45 pm that Good Friday afternoon, when a resident of the suburban subdivision reported a fresh rivulet of diluted Wabasca heavy crude oil from Canada snaking across the lawn, pooling around children's yard toys, filling gutters, and flowing on down the street, to the nearest storm drain. (Horrendous slideshow here)

And it smelled! The smell carried for miles. Up close, prolonged exposure was potentially unhealthy, for lung, brain, peace of mind. Environmental responders monitored the air quality for days, but only some of the cleanup workers wore breathing masks.

The pipeline gushed for almost an hour before ExxonMobil had it shut down.

The cleanup began at once and continues. Local volunteers responded immediately to keep the spill from entering nearby Lake Conway, with apparent success so far. Rain hasn't helped. ExxonMobil has promised to be there till it's done. Local, state, and federal teams are also on site, but the situation remains fluid, as it were, with potential impacts possible from local to global.

Eight days into the Mayflower spill, here are some of the questions it raises and some of the current answers, subject to future refinement.

Why Didn't People Know They Were Living Near a Pipeline?

Excellent question. And if it gets to court as a real estate dispute, a judge may have to weigh the comparative negligence of a seller's failure to disclose against a buyer's failure to do due diligence.

But government decisions in recent years made due diligence more difficult. After September 11, 2001, fear of further terrorist attacks led to concern about the pipeline as a target. As the local KTHV television station reported, "details of its location were somewhat suppressed, but the information has become more public since then."

Is That Why There's a No-Fly Zone, Fear of Terrorists?

Probably not. The official Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notice was effective shortly after 2 p.m. on April Fools Day and stated: "No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered" by the notice, which cited unnamed "hazards" and was effective "until further notice." The area covered is a circle with a 5-mile radius around the spill, up to an altitude of 1,000 feet.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on April 3 that relief aircraft in the no-fly zone would be "under the direction of Tom Suhrhoff," who turns out to be an ExxonMobil employee.

The same day, FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford told Dow Jones that at least one helicopter was needed to move workers around and scout the area for further spills, and that helicopter (or helicopters) needed to be able to move about freely without needing to worry about other aircraft in the area.

A five-minute aerial video, shot by Adam Randall the same day the FAA put the no-fly zone order in place, shows some of the cleanup activities at the subdivision and in the surrounding wetlands, where the oil spread is measured in miles:

Rivulets of oil filled up ravines and trenches in the marshes near Mayflower. Black balls of crude rolled on top of the water, with the major portions of Lake Conway protected by floating partitions.

How Big Was the Spill in Mayflower, Arkansas?

Probably nobody knows yet. ExxonMobil said it was providing equipment and manpower sufficient to deal with a spill of 10,000 barrels. ExxonMobil also said that was a "conservative" response to the spill, which they expect is smaller. ExxonMobil considers this a small spill.

Published estimates of the size of the spill range from 2,000 to 12,000 barrels. By April 5, USA Today was reporting the spill as "tens of thousands of barrels of heavy crude oil."

The U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration estimate is 3,500-5000 barrels. (A rough estimate based on the pipeline capacity of 90,000 barrels per day, with the pipeline gushing for an hour would produce a spill of about 3,750 barrels of Wabasca heavy crude tar sands oil.)

By the standards of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a "major spill" is anything more than 249 barrels.

Regulators recently levied a fine of $1.7 million on ExxonMobil for a July 2011 spill in the Yellowstone River in Montana, where the amount of oil spilled was about 1,500 barrels.

What's the Worst That Can Happen from This Spill?

The biggest concern when the spill was first discovered was that the raw oil would reach Lake Conway, only a mile from the hole in the pipeline.

As an Arkansas state promotional website explains:

At 6,700-acres, Lake Conway is the largest man-made game and fish commission lake in the United States. Construction of the lake began in 1948, with its waters coming from the runoff of Stone Dam Creek, Gold Creek, Palarm Creek, Little Cypress Creek and Panther Creek. Its average depth is six feet, with a maximum depth of 18 feet. The lake is approximately eight miles long with 52 miles of shoreline.

The lake is separated from the pipeline by an Interstate highway (a source of daily pollution itself), and within a few days of the spill the oil had migrated under the highway past several sets of oil booms set out by ExxonMobil.

So far the spill has injured or killed 16 ducks, two turtles, and a muskrat.

Who Filed a Lawsuit? And on What Grounds?

Two residents of the polluted Northwoods subdivision, Kimla Greene and Kathryn Jane Roachell Chunn, filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Little Rock on April 5, seeking an unstated amount of damages on behalf of themselves and their neighbors, anyone living within 3,000 feet of the burst pipeline.

The suit seeks compensation for damage caused by the pipeline failure, including lost property values, environmental damage, and other harm, the value of which could reach several million dollars, if they win the case.

Who Decided Who Should Be Evacuated?

The Mayflower Incident Unified Command includes ExxonMobil, Faulkner County, the EPA, and the City of Mayflower. Local officials reportedly recommended the evacuation of 22 houses closest to the pipeline soon after the spill occurred. There seems to have been no resistance. ExxonMobil has promised to pay the expenses of the some 40 people evacuated. The City of Mayflower maintains a web site with details of the spill and response.

Residents may not be allowed to return to their homes for a month or more. So far they have filed about 140 claims with ExxonMobil.

Who Instituted What Amounts to Martial Law in the Subdivision?

Nobody, at least not officially. Some reporters have complained about the heavy-handed controls imposed by authorities, who have effectively closed off the spill zone as they see fit. Suzi Parker in Grist argued that ExxonMobil "has instituted something like martial law."

Lisa Song from Inside Climate News and Michael Hibblen of local public radio KUAR described similar encounters with the Faulkner County Sheriff's Department. Both recount the sheriff's deputies first denying them access to the site and herding them into a restricted area. Then, soon after, without explanation, the deputies ordered the reporters to leave within 10 seconds or face arrest for criminal trespass.

This use of county sheriff departments is a pattern in East Texas, where TransCanada is building the Keystone XL pipeline to carry more dilbit, tar sands oil, to Gulf coast refineries. In Texas the deputies under the control of TransCanada used pepper spray, physical violence, and forms of torture on protestors before arresting most of them. There have been no reported arrests in Arkansas.

What's the Difference Between Wabasca Heavy Crude and Tar Sands Oil?

Little or nothing.

If there's any significant difference, it's not widely known yet. It all comes from the same wide region of Canada, it's all bitumen, and it all has to be diluted to be moved by pipeline. What's in the pipeline is all diluted bitumen, or dilbit.

It's hard to find out what the dilutants (or diluents) are, which is probably important.

Where Does Wabasca Heavy Crude Oil Come From?

Wabasca Heavy comes from the tar sands region of Alberta, Canada. It moves primarily via Pembina and Rainbow pipelines to Edmonton and on to the pipeline nexus in Hardisty. From there it is distributed to destinations in Canada and the U.S.

One route takes Wabasca Heavy through the existing Keystone pipeline to Patoka, Illinois. There it transfers to ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline which takes it to Nederland, Texas, by way of Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles north of Little Rock.

What Is this Pegasus Pipeline?

ExxonMobil owns and operates the Pegasus pipeline, a 20-inch diameter pipe that is 858 miles long and is mostly buried between Patoka, Illinois, and Nederland, Texas.

Pegasus was built in the 1940s, to bring refined oil north from Texas. In 2006, ExxonMobil reversed the direction of the pipeline's flow to carry Wabasca Heavy south. In 2009, ExxonMobil increased the carrying capacity of the pipeline by 50%, to 90,000 barrels per day. Published estimates of its carrying capacity range from 80,000 to 95,000 barrels per day.

An ExxonMobil press release announcing the expansion added that: "Operational enhancements, such as new leak detection technology, were also incorporated to support ExxonMobil Pipeline Company's primary focus on operating its pipelines in a safe and environmentally responsible manner."

The federal class action lawsuit alleges that these changes – including reversing the flow and increasing the capacity – weakened the pipeline and contributed directly to its failure in Mayflower.

On April 3, CBS News reported – falsely – that the pipeline had "carried crude oil from Canada to Texas for decades." CBS did not mention tar sands, bitumen, or dilbit, treating the spill by omission as if it were not unusual.

In 2010, ExxonMobil was fined $26,200 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration for failing to inspect the Pegasus pipeline as frequently as required by law.

The pipeline was last inspected in February 2013, but the results are not public.

So What Happens to the Wabasca Heavy in Nederland?

In Nederland, which is part of the greater Beaumont-Port Arthur metropolitan area along the Gulf coast of Texas, Wabasca Heavy will leave the pipeline for processing at one of the many local refineries.

Does Diluted Bitumen/Dilbit Corrode Pipelines Faster Than Other Oil?

The answer is in dispute.

Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) say dilbit corrosion is greater, based in part on the fact that pipelines carrying dilbit oil have spilled 3.6 times more oil than the U.S. average. A study by the Alberta government concluded that dilbit oil causes more pipeline failures than conventional oil. These arguments address somewhat different questions. The U.S. National Academies of Science has a committee studying the question, but it has so far been hampered by the unwillingness of pipeline companies to share sufficient data.

Has Dilbit Oil Ever Spilled Before?

Of course, although records are not comprehensive. The most notable diluted bitumen spill in recent history was in 2010, when an Enbridge owned-and-operated pipeline burst and dumped an unknown amount of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, polluting some 40 miles of river and wetlands.

The Kalamazoo River cleanup is now in its third year and has cost more than $800 million so far.

ExxonMobil is #2, with annual profits of $41 billion. This is good enough to rank ExxonMobil #1 among American corporations, way ahead of #2, Chevron, with annual profits of $26.9 billion.

Coming in third, at $32.2 billion a year, is the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.

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I love the opening paragraph; and the last clause of it tells the most telling story here: ordinary citizens will reveal and reverse the US corporate-official secrecy empire to be the world's most threatening terrorist organization simply doing what they must, in this case, "... and several homeowners had filed a class action lawsuit seeking damages from the world's second-most-profitable corporation, which had helped keep the pipeline secret from terrorists."

And take that class action they must indeed, because the Obama "justice" department is too senile and otherwise too feeble & inept to prosecute corporate crime.

Three cheers to citizens fighting back to protect their own self-interest.

It is curious just how un-governed the corporate moguls are: "Pegasus was built in the 1940s, to bring refined oil north from Texas. In 2006, ExxonMobil reversed the direction of the pipeline's flow to carry Wabasca Heavy south. In 2009, ExxonMobil increased the carrying capacity of the pipeline by 50%, to 90,000 barrels per day."

No one with public authority knows what that oil contains, or why it is corrosive enough to eat through the pipelines. No one, that is, except the criminally duplicitous officials and the corporate moguls to whom they have delegated their official responsibilty.

And with this responsibility, the corporate moguls licentiously experiment with the whole planet, caring not one whit what damage they do, and getting away with every bit of it, seeing even the worst damages as 'the cost' of their ungoverned profiteering.

As well they should. The fines they pay are negligible, compared to the actual costs to the planet and every living thing on it.

Folks, it appears our government has been chasing rainbows with drones while abdicating its powers and responsibilities supposedly dedicated to the public good.

And on top of this criminally stupid behavior, they still get SUBSIDIES from taxpayers.... because our negligent, self-serving congress allows them to continue, while attempting to cut/ slash/ burn the pitiful safety net of social security and Medicare!

Thanks for the great coverage of an incident that has been ignored by the media. From oil company reports there are 280 spills annually with over 3 million gallons polluting our air, soil and groundwater.More context: In the Gulf where BP lied that the oil plume was a tiny fraction of the real gusher that is still polluting the gulf. Exxon Mobile has the same incentive to under-report: The law says they pay depending on the volume of the spill. Therefore it is worth millions per day to under report. Independent experts MUST be allowed into the site NOW! Also, I saw the 5-min video of Lake Conway taken before the corporate shut-down of the neighborhood. (Is there any question we have faxcism?) It looked like oil on the lake by Saturday. Check it out for yourself on you tube.

Upon reredading the article, I was struck by what an oil company calls a small spill - gearing for 10,000 gallons (yes, I know they said the negligent leak is less). But the legal definition of a large spill is 249 or more gallons. If they are annually leaking 3.5 million gallons into our environment, then 10,000 is probably small by their standards. We need to change their standards by EXTREMELY LARGE FINES. They are always and only about the bottom line!

We must completely reverse the way that we see this planet if mankind is to survive. Make no mistake, Exxon-Mobile and its like are the true terrorist organizations, threatening our entire way of life for the sake of greed. These rich elitists are so cocooned in luxury and privilege that they have become indifferent to reality. They will do whatever lowdown, dirty thing that they have to in order to preserve their lavish lifestyles. They have forgotten the ancient ways, such as a reverence for the earth and all of its creatures, and this forgetfulness of man's responsibilities to the planet is killing all that is precious to us. Young people must wake up and organize to take back their inheritance, and they must do it now. Our very existence as a species is in jeopardy.

"Folks, it appears our government has been chasing rainbows with drones while abdicating its powers and responsibilitie s supposedly dedicated to the public good."

Mr. Smith has put his finger on the real problem; not only about oil spills but about the demise of America,the lack of healthcare for her citizens, lack of education for her children and the loss of privacy for all,to mention only a few.

This is why 40,000 people marched on Washington to protest the XL pipeline. They know how dangerous this is. We need more protests and action to demand a stop to this. If they don't stop more and more of this will happen as us and our envrionment are being ravaged. The deadly chemicals that are being used in this oil clean up combined with the 500 deadly cancer causing chemicals that unregulated companies are dumping into our ground water from fracking is a holocaust in the making. It is clear these companies are not fit to make any responsible decisions. Everything is expediable to them except their profits. People and animals will die.

My guess is that ExxonMobile is just plain lying about inspecting and evaluating the results of that February inspection. An "intelligent pig" ( the term for the devise that is run through pipelines for inspection ) should have recorded pipeline wall thicknesses. In the 1940's all pipeline welds were done by hand, and the quality was no where near what is achieved with automatic pipe welding machines. Again, I think that they probably did the inspection, as required, but have not, or at least not properly, studied and moved on the results. There are 20 inch pipelines that carry more than 90,000 bbl/day.

Until people get in those precious NRA up in arms this sort of thing will happen. What will it take for the US to realize that we are living under martial law impose by corporate America. They hold the Gov't hostage and the American people hostage. This is what comes of having Oil Interests in the White House for 8 years. Something else to that Bush/Cheney for.

God, Please flood red states in tar sands oil spills. Gulf was good start, but I know you can do more. Kansas REALLY needs a mess.

Please, Dick, don't pray that on all of us unfortunate souls who happen to live in red states! We are not all greedy old pigs! We are just old enough, or poor enough, or our lives are complicated enough, that we can't move. Any why on earth would you feel the Gulf is red???

A GLARING EXAMPLE for cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline.... it has been nothing but trouble from the beginning!!! Bad planning, lack of concern for the public, and only the greedy grab for OIL!!!!Sadly,Beverly SmithCottonwood AZ

Instead of the government subsidizing big oil, we need to make them pay massive fines for their pollution of the Gulf, Kansas and Alaska and put substantial money into local sources of renewable energy sources. My goal on my 58 acre farm in Camp Verde, is to operate my farm with only sustainable sources of energy and to be a local source of Organic food.

What is the point of origin of the leak? In front of whose house? Why no image of the hole in the ground or in the pipe? Was it corrosion, a weld failure, sabotage by cutting or explosives, or WHAT? Do we have to wait for NTSB for answers? Is Exxon Mobil and their execs too big to jail?

How bad does it have to get to make us realize what our thirst for bitumen (aka asphalt) is doing to our country...not just the environment but the resulting police state tactics being used to silence the facts.

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